In my belief, this is an excellent point. Being in a scientific field, I have a tendency...err...not to believe people doing research!

This thing is easy enough to test. Plug in a the variables today... and see if it predicts the weather currently tomorrow, or the next big hurricane, or whatever. They haven't published this type of research yet... why not?

Being in a scientific field, you might have taken a
minute to read the article, where it says that the computer is designed for climate not weather forecast. I.e., you might get an accurate estimate for the probability of a hurricane within a given month, but don't expect to find out the weather for tomorrow.

Actually, what you want to do is take the best data you can find for "exogenous" variables over the last 100 years (solar cycle, volcanoes, anthropogenic emissions), and plug them into the model and compare the overall trends to reality (rather than trying to predict a "specific" hurricane, which is not what the model is designed for):
One would expect that you can match global average temperature and sea level rise pretty well since current (100 km resolution) models already do so (see IPCC report). The

Usage Note: Assure, ensure, and insure all mean "to make secure or certain." Only assure is used with reference to a person in the sense of "to set the mind at rest": assured the leader of his loyalty. Although ensure and insure are generally interchangeable, only insure is now widely used in American English in the commercial sense of "to guarantee persons or property against risk."

I'm still not sure who is correct here. Please don't make me diagram the sentence.:)

Since Merriam-Webster seems to back you up I'll concede the point and colour myself suitably embarassed (I have been taught to stress the differences between these words and I shall now be forced to hunt down and kill my olde English teacher).

I believe the resolution to this issue is to be found in the usage note:

"Although ensure and insure are generally interchangeable, only insure is now widely used in American English in the commercial sense of "to guarantee persons or property against risk."

In the States, insure has started to acquire the exclusive meaning of "to guarantee persons or property," while ensure has retained the more general meaning. So, in contemporary American usage, ensure is general, and insure has the specific meaning asso

When I'm writing a document, I've often looked at Insure and decided I want Ensure. I never eve nthought about assure, but I agree with what you posted for the usage note. I use Insure as a kind of warranty. If it's been insured, then if something goes wrong, there will be compensation. Ensure on the otherhand is like assure, but perhaps aimed at the self. Examples:

My mom assures me that the cookies will not burn.
I can ensure the cookies will not burn by checking them every couple minutes.
The state

I follow this usage as well, but few dictionaries seem to back this up. Insure is mopping up after a disaster, Ensure is proactive avoidance of a disaster, Assure is just saying there will be no disaster.

In my own life, I find I often want to verify that the art supply expert is ensuring that the blue pigment will not turn green in sunlight and that he is not just insuring that I can get my money back if my painting ends up ruined.

the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer is producing results showing that it is possible to model climate down to the level of severe weather events

First of all, that is already happening with current weather models...those are the ones that predict hurricane paths and such. There were already predictions that this would be an unusually heavy hurricane season before it started - those were due to climate models that showed the ocean area responsible would be warmer than normal.

Predicting where hurricanes will appear and where they will go ahead of time (that is without looking at the current weather patterns while it is happening) involves that pesky chaos thing and good luck with that.

Perhaps what the person was trying to say is that this is the first time researchers have been able to run 10 km. (or 5, or 1) resolution models on a global scale all at once - and that is quite an achievement if so.

BTW, the point of all this is not to predict individual hurricanes or tracks. It is primarily to identify long-term climate trends. From the article:

"This means that we potentially have the capability to predict whether storms like Hurricane Isabel will be on the increase in future." - Professor Julia Slingo. (Hmmm, I guess she's from Soviet Russia;)

There were already predictions that this would be an unusually heavy hurricane season before it started - those were due to climate models that showed the ocean area responsible would be warmer than normal.

But remember that the same models predicted a heavy hurricane season last year and it didn't happen. Weather predictions are still only a little better at this point than a man in a loincloth shaking a bone at the moon. It's not enough for them to predict right once. I want to see a good record of accu

I'm still waiting for a supercomputer that can create hurricanes. Who cares about predicting them when you can't do anything to stop them? I envision a future where we stop hurricanes by throwing other hurricanes at them, and nations conduct large scale wars by throwing hurricanes at each other.

Here at RIT we have what we call the weather machine. Why is this?
Almost every day we have a tour/orientation, the weather is great. You can plan picnics based on when these events are and you won't be disappointed. If anyone knows what the weather in Rochester, NY is like, they'll appreciate this.

If a single butterfly flapping its wings in the right place can start a hurricane (according to urban legend) surely all we need is to find that butterfly and model its brain. Butterfly brains are pretty small, a G5 dual processor Mac should be enough plus a few little electric motors to flap the butterfly wings.

Oh, wait, it seems we need the supercomputer to work out where to put the butterfly.

Well, it's not really so much of an urban legend, as a way of explaining chaos theory (thanks Jurassic Park). The idea is that, no matter how accurate your initial data are, there will still be some round-off errors (basically) in your numbers. When you do a lot of calculations on these data, small differences in the initial data manifest themselves as large-scale phenomena down the road. Hence, a butterfly's position now determines whether or not a hurricane occurs three weeks later.

Hurricanes and Tornadoes (and also other socalled natural disasters)
are man-made. All you need is a weather satellite and you'll whip up
that tunnel to the strenght that you want it and you drive that thing
to shore or through the country.

Who would do such a thing? Is it Al Queda? No, but it is the same that
runs secrely Al Queda and any other form of terror group, it is the
SEGNPMSS, the still existing German Nazi Pyschiatrists Mindcontroller
Secret Service.

Wow, I'm surprised that a resolution of 10 cubic kilometers is enough to actually make any predictions besides the most general of weather trends.

Define "the most general of weather trends". Currently, at least for here in the US, the model of choice (something always of debate) is the Eta [noaa.gov] that typically is run at 44km (they have much higher resolutions, but those aren't as readily available). Believe it or not, this model has been great at forecasting for frontal based weather (like thunderstorms along a cold front) and winter storm systems (it is able to place the areas of heavy snow by county) Depending on how close the model run is the the event, the placement of this information is usually pretty close.

That isn't to say it is perfect. As you could imagine for a grid that size, the model will typically miss popcorn type showers and thunderstorms. Also, if you do any severe weather forecasting, you will miss the small scale features like a tornado or such.

Wow, I'm surprised that a resolution of 10 cubic kilometers is enough to actually make any predictions besides the most general of weather trends.

Think of the variation between the state of air at sea level and then at the ceiling of a 10km cell... that's some severe approximation.

It would be a horrifically bad approximation, yes, but you cannot compare horizontal resolutions and scales with vertical ones. The temperature variation over the lowest 10 km is about 70C (130F). At that height, pressure and density are both about 20% of their sea level values. You'll never find that kind of variation in the horizontal over any distance, never mind adjacent 10 km grid squares.

There is much that cannot be resolved at 10 km, but at this point in time 10 km horizontal resolution on a global scale is fantastic.

Saw a TV program on it a while back; they showed research on researchers using EarthSim to see shockwave propogation if a large earthquake was to occur in Kanto, or more specifically within a short distance to Tokyo (which is probably the biggest worry to the entire Japanese seismelogical and to a lesser extent meterological bodies).

The conclusion was basically that Japan would be f***'ed if such was to happen, but that's rant for another day.

So, earthsimulator simulates a lot of things. I am surprised that they don't model nuclear blasts on them, because it certainly CAN. Or at least we just don't know about it.

One thing is for sure, though - I will attest that NEC definitely made a bundle over this =)

btw, for ppl who are in japan, you can schedule tours to the place. I havn't tried yet, but in case anyone is interested... (now that I think about it, wasn't there a story about this a while back?) but here is a link just for fun: visitor information [jamstec.go.jp].

and if you are brave enough for the same page in japanese, click here [jamstec.go.jp]. (The japanese page has a japanese map, which shows station names in kanji. I always found kanji station names to be more help, but that might be just me...

"I am surprised that they don't model nuclear blasts on them, because it certainly CAN."

The one in Los Alamos does that, while the Japanese one predicts weather. It's something of a common joke that the japanese are using world's fastest supercomputer to improve the environment, while the americans are using the world's second-fastest supercomputer to design bigger nuclear weapons.

The one in Los Alamos does that, while the Japanese one predicts weather.

Well they both do a good bit more than that... the project list for the Japanese one is really quite nifty (and I'm sure I could find an equivalent list for Los Alamos if I was sufficiently interested), and includes non-weather related research as well. Including nuclear energy research (not weapons related, but medical/energy/manufacturing).

As for Los Alamos -- the primary reason isn't to build bigger weapons, but to ensure that th

It's something of a common joke that the japanese are using world's fastest supercomputer to improve the environment, while the americans are using the world's second-fastest supercomputer to design bigger nuclear weapons.

Yeah, but what the jokers don't tell you is that on nights and weekends, the Japanese supercomputer is used to model giant fighting robots piloted by school children, one of whom is only doing it because his dad runs the project.

they showed research on researchers using EarthSim to see shockwave propogation

To be slightly pedantic, earthquake waves are not shock waves. They are perfectly ordinary elastic waves. A shock is produced by a body moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium (e.g., a sonic boom). That doesn't mean that one couldn't be shocked by earthquakes, though;)

Remember this article [slashdot.org]? Yeah, I know, completely different technologies, but it seems like after decades of mediocre weather forecasting the technology is suddenly jumping forward all at once.

I wonder if the system releases only one pattern that the weather will follow or if it returns many different ways that the weather could go. From what I've heard previously about hurricanes, they have the tendancy to change paths when they feel like it - would the machine give more than just one pattern that the hurricane could take or do you think that it gives what it has discovered is the best answer?

Each run of the model only offers one solution (called a deterministic forecast).

There is a technique called ensemble forecasting, whereby you run multiple instances of the model with slightly disturbed initial conditions and/or slightly tweaked model parameters. You can then examine the statistics of the ensemble to try and obtain information a deterministic forecast might not be able to give you.

Note that the goal in this particular case is not hurricane forecasting as such. The newsworthy information is that this is the first time that a climate model can be run at a resolution high enough that hurricanes become possible within the simulation. Short term models used for the daily weather forecast do this reasonably well already.

Here's how ensemble forecasting works for horse racing. You find a track that's running at least 4 races per day, two weekend days in a row (Fri and Sat, for example, though it varies.) You then print up cards that forecast every single combination of the 8 horses. 8^4 is what, about 3600. Then, stand near the horse track, and hand out your cards, one for every tenth person who enters, no more. At the bottom, it says "to get our predictions for tomorrows' races, call xxx-xxxx."

The distributed climate project is not trying to find that one card that happens to predict the winner. Rather, they are perturbing the input parameters to see how they affect the outcome. They want to see the distribution of results one gets with varying inputs. Each model they run is perfectly deterministic. But, since uncertainty in the input values is inescapable, it will be good to know how changing these values affects the output. These sorts of Monte Carlo simulations are perfectly acceptable as

Suppose you run an ensemble and discover that a tiny change in inputs causes a big change in outputs. Then you know that you're on a cusp, and the uncertainties in your input data will probably make your forecast diverge from the actual weather.

Other times you'll discover that all the outputs are pretty similar. Then you know that you're in a stable and predictable part of the state space. Then you can publish an extreme long range forecast without worryi

I wonder if the system releases only one pattern that the weather will follow or if it returns many different ways that the weather could go.

I would hope so. The National Center for Environmental Predictions (NCEP [noaa.gov]) does this now with their model called the Global Forecast System (GFS [noaa.gov]) that goes out to 384 hours or 16 days. With this model, they do something called ensemble forecasts where they rerun the model another ten times at a reduced resolution from the master run with perturbations added to each. Then they compare the results and will, on some of the graphics, use all ten to perform a type of averaging to remove the really bogus forecasts.

My experience has been if you are doing any type of long range forecasting, the ensemble method is the way to go. I am not saying that it is exact, but has proven an invaluable guide past day 4 for good long range forecasting. My guess is that this project in Japan would be taking this into account and performing something like this type of ensemble method. If not, I would seriously question their results.

Model the destruction to the USA east coast that WILL happen when a large chunk of the Canaries falls into the sea, ( estimated to be sometime in the next few centuries ) now if the EU really wanted to 'influence' US policy a few studies like these, plus a bit of mining might do it..... conspiracy theorists take note!

The "Canary scenario" is not universally accepted by workers in the field of tsunami hazards. Both the likelihood of such a mass wasting event occuring as well as the modeling of what would happen if it did have been called into question [sthjournal.org].

As mentioned before, there is a distributed project called climateprediction.net [climateprediction.net] for those who want to participate themselves. It is run by the University of Oxford in the UK, it is not affiliated with . So far only a windows client, but a Linux one is in the works. It is very CPU intensive, so if you have less than an 800mhz processor you shouldn't bother, it would take months to finish a single unit of work.

"In little more than a decade, the United States has fallen significantly behind other countries in its ability to simulate and predict long-term shifts in climate, according to a wide range of scientists and recent federal studies.""During the Clinton administration, the lack of American modeling leadership did not have a discernible impact on climate policy, various experts said. But it did prevent the United States from playing a more central role in writing critical sections of the Intergovernmental Panel's report -- particularly the part assessing the extent of human influence on the warming trend of recent decades.

In computing power, Dr. Sarachik said, "our top two centers together don't amount to one-fifth of the European effort."

In that article from the New York Times is from two years ago! It mentions the japanese plans to build the Earth Simulator.

In little more than a decade, the United States has fallen significantly behind other countries in its ability to simulate and predict long-term shifts in climate

So in "little more than a decade" we've fallen behind someone in ways that can only really be proven by data from a longitudinal study over many years? I'm not sure how we can be sure of that; we'd need more than a decade to compare long-term predictions to the results, right?

(I "get" where you're going, and it's an interesting point: Is our largely politicized skepticism about global warming change preventing us from investing in climate research? Basically I'm in sympathy with that question being asked, at least. But the data's still out on the actual results, isn't it?)

I get happily surprised every time on Slashdot when someone makes a polite and well reasoned argument. Thank you!

Well, perhaps the data might not convince everyone that the politics are in the way of science

Americans are phenomenally ignorant about climate. Most do not even know why summer is hotter than winter. As the AAAS Project 2061 [project2061.org] describes it,

A classic video made at a Harvard University graduation illustrates what I mean (

Private Universe Project [learner.org], 1989). In the video, young graduates and faculty--still in their caps and gowns-- answer this question: Why is it warm in the summer and cold in the winter? Twenty-two out of 25 got the answer wrong. The typical answer was that it's warmer in the summer beca

I looked at your links, and saw that those were quotes were quotes from further (unlisted) sources.

While I agree that too many high-school grads don't understand basic tenants of science, a survey of 25 students standing in line at one school is hardly a representative sample.

Similarly, from their page "More than half of the US population doesn't know that the earth orbits the sun or how scientists figured out that it does. Almost no one can explain what the phrase "orbits the sun" even means. Worse still

You are right to be skeptical. However, the sources of the quotes are readily available. They're just not on line, so I linked to a page that had bibliographic citations to the primary sources on dead trees and videotape.

I have seen the "Private Universe" videotape and you can order it from the link I supplied if you want to see it too. My favorite part is when Professor Stephen Thernstrom, coauthor of the anti-affirmative action screed America in Black and White confidently demonstrates his ignorance of

I think it should be noted that the article says they can only predict the likelyhood of hurricains occuring, rather than actual individual instances of hurricains as that title of this story implys..... We wont be able to fast forward the model, and predict a hurricaine years before it comes along for instance.... (Somthing to do with Chaos theory ends all hope of this ever happening..... You'd have to predict a leaf falling someplace else first!).

You are right, the forecasting of individual hurricanes or storms is completely besides the point of a climate model.

The application here is in the area of climate forecasting, attempting to forecast trends in upcoming decades. It's not even important whether the model gets individual storms right, as long as the averages are realistic.

The advance is in becoming able to incorporate hurricanes in the simulation. This should help improve the realism of those trends and averages.

While it is nice to know the computing power is out there, people need to realize that the prediction is only as good as the software the scientist. There are a lot of things that go into the weather. I question if we have caputred data on enough of them to really start making such long term predictions. I am curious if they have actually been able to modle past weather based upon the data they would have had avalable. Predicting the weather for what happened a year ago would be a neat trick, but only if you don't cheat and use more data then what would have been avalable if one had done it for real.

With the intense competition and peer review in the field of weather and climate forecasting, model validation and comparison is a constant concern. I also happen to know researchers in the field who would go to great lengths to validate their results anyway, because they take pride in doing their work well and they want to get to the truth.

In the case of a model used for the daily forecast, there are archives and canned cases that can be used for comparison.

Well now that we might be predicting when and where hurricanes will occur, do you think it may convince religious zealots that hurricanes are just part of life? Or do we have to make peace that some people still think an eclipse is the work of the supernatural and that some of us always like to read our horoscopes?

Given that they accept these things on faith. I expect that another solution for their need to rationalize the beliefs will show itself.

Don't frustrate yourself! Don't worry about these folks!

Probably off topic but my daughter recently learned about how hurricanes form, and what powers them in school and was quite fascinated. My point is that the truth about our natural surroundings can be as interesting to those recently exposed to it (But I suppose it requires an open mind) as the fantasies concocted b

This comment is akinned to those that people make who are convinced that Science (tm) has somehow disproven the existence of God, simply because we now have a better understanding of the physical mechanisms for certain phenomena that used to be explained by divine activity (a popular example is Zeus casting down lightning bolts). Whether or not individual lightning "bolts" (or hurricanes) have some divine purpose is not a question that we can answer by understanding atmospheric science.
In a rough paralle

I had no idea how much more powerful NEC's EarthSim was than the the "next best thing" was, as far as supercomputers go, but check Top500.org's current list [top500.org] (to be updated in November) out: NEC ES runs, at max, almost three times (!) the G-flops as the next runner-up. I always figured the supercomputer races would be like Cedar Pointe and their roller coasters... you know, somebody builds a bigger or faster one, so you build another that edges them out by just enough to reclaim the title. I had no idea NEC decided to take the "largest computational genitals, period" crown with such authority.

The NEC EarthSimulator has been top of the Top500 list since the June 2002 edition.
The main reason for its maintained top ranking is that it is a highly specialised, purpose-built machine. As far as I am aware, all the other listed machines come off a production line or are built from off-the-shelf, commodity parts. That's not to suggest one couldn't buy an EathSim off NEC if you made a suitable offer:-)
If my memory serves me, a similar, highly specialised machine, the Japanese 'Numerical Wind Tunnel',

but the differences are bluring. The earth simulater uses vector processors, but NEC produces even workstations with that cpu. Thats not too different from the other clusters. Even if itanium,opteron and alpha may me "of the shelf" cpus, a rack with >myrinet connectivity or even switched HT links isnt very different from a "highly specialied, pupose.build machine"

More informative might be the CPU2000 benchmark figures at SPEC [spec.org]. Lots of CPUs tested for both integer and FP performance and throughput. LINPACK is a linear algebra library. I think the SPEC FP benchmark includes codes that do lots of linear algebra (among other things).

Keep in mind the top500 list is built by volountary submissions to the archive. That means - there is a not insubstantial number of computers that "should" be in the top 500 (and top 5 for that matter) but aren't because of either a) the researchers who bought the system are just itching to use their very expensive machine for research and just bypass running the benchmark to get right down to business b) the agency/company using the machine desires to maintain a low profile.

"They show that, for the first time, our climate models can be run at resolutions capable of...

I have always heard that the flapping of a butterfly here can cause a storm in China....

Just wondering whether someday the resolution will be so good that out of the millions of butterflies flapping, they will be able to track down that culprit whose flapping caused the storm in china...

because if they can do it, you won't find me posting to slashdot, but on the run trying to kill that damn butterfly before I am blamed for it all... The TIA and CAPPS goons shoot horses, don't they... or is it people that they shoot...

The article contains a photo of a train with the caption: Fewer tracks may buckle in heatwaves

The recent track buckling problem in the UK was caused by the use of cheap lightweight tracks (which is why our European neighbours were unaffected). I have to wonder though how the author of this article reaches the conclusion that simulating climate models will actually lead to less track buckling. It was already known that the tracks would buckle occaisionally, but those in charge of the railways planned for drivers to slow down and try to see buckled lines ahead (as if derailing at 60mph is acceptable!).

The tracks in the UK aren't cheap and lightweight - the defining characteristic that causes them to buckle is that the rail sections are longer than those on the continent, and have less in the way of inter-section spacing for the rails to expand into when they heat up.

It's plausible, although I read in The Times that the French use heavier steel which resists the expansion of the track. Also the ride quality on the continent is astonishingly better than that in the UK, so the rail inter-section spacing

BUT... Can it model potential intensity? NOAA and NWS have been able (as proven by Isabel) to give 5 day advance warning of where the storms are actually going to hit. No, it is not dumb luck. The trick is to figure out how strong the storm is going to be upon landfall, which allows goverments, NGOs and the general population to make proper decisions with regard to evacuation and appropriate response. They can't do this yet.

I live in Southern Mexico on the coast. About 5 years ago Hurrican Mitch, a category 5 hurricane, was sitting out at sea not too far away. For nearly a week it hardly moved, just hanging out in the middle of the ocean building up strength. The whole time, the NOAA/NHC was predicting it would hit us dead on in 3 days. Yet the hurricane just stayed there.

Suddenly, the hurricane turned south and hit Honduras. Where it again stalled and hung out for 3 days. In the end, about 11,000 Hondurans died, primarily from massive mudslides that consumed enitre villages.

I really hope they improve the models significantly so that things like this don't have to happen. If hurricanes could be predicted with more accuracy, to the point that people and countries could trust the predictions, these areas could be evacuated.

Unfortunately, with the level of accuracy, there's such a wide area in the predicted path that it's impossible to evacuate everyone that could potentially be in the path in time to save them.

When I first moved down here, I though, "Gee, I'd like to see what a hurricane is like." Then Mitch showed up. When you have a category 5 hurricane on your doorstep, you start to re-evaluate your life a bit. The town I live in would have been leveled. I would have been one of the lucky ones. I had a car and would have simply driven inland to avoid it. A lot of people couldn't have afforded to do that.

With more accurate predictions, the government could sponsor the evacuations and save a lot of lives.